Yesterday’s declaration by President Obama, signaling with his inaugural address that he intends to turn America around and march it backwards to the glory days of failed leftism -- making of America one gigantic society of beggars -- raises the central and obvious point.

It’s the damage, stupid.

So how much damage can the American left do over the next four years?

Really. Seriously.

How much damage can the far-left-wing do with a re-elected Obama presidency?

A lot. When one hears the President of the United States use his inaugural address to favorably cite the most infamous phrase associated with the disastrous Neville Chamberlain -- that would be “peace in our time” -- there can only be trouble ahead.

The mechanics for this march backwards to failure are already in place.

First and foremost is the Orwellian use of his language. Tyranny is freedom. Collectivism is liberty. “Together” is shorthand for government control.

Second is the renewal of campaign warfare -- with a new target.

Remember Kill Romney? You remember this, right? The moment back there in the 2012 campaign when it was said by an Obama strategist that the president’s team, politically speaking, intended “to kill Romney.”

And so they did. Mitt Romney was magically transformed from the reality of solid American citizen and accomplished businessman to murderer and thief. In the political nano-second of a presidential campaign cycle mere months long.

Move over Mitt.

There is a bigger target in left-wing sights now. A much bigger target: The Constitution of the United States.

Yet again, the people whose ancestors so hated the Constitution they have repeatedly tried to eliminate or severely restrict the guarantees of liberty it provides, believe their moment has arrived.

These are the political descendants of those who tried to write slavery into the Constitution -- the Dred Scott decision, written by the liberal Andrew Jackson appointee, the slave-owning Chief Justice Roger Taney. In which a liberal court declared blacks were not human beings and thus their right to anything other than literal chains simply did not -- and never would -- exist. Then there was the brainchild of segregation, ruthlessly enforced for decades by a long succession of liberal Democrats at the federal, state, and local level, in which blacks were denied their liberty to vote, eat in restaurants, sit in the front of a bus or even marry outside of their race. Lynching? Democrats made a specialty of this one, refusing repeatedly to outlaw the denial of a basic right to life to black Americans, instead empowering the Ku Klux Klan -- the Klan in turn a pillar of support for a big government.

The modern versions of all this? The modern restrictors of liberty and freedom who in the past were slave owners, segregationists, lynchers, and Klansmen -- all key components of the Democrats and the progressive movement?

How and who specifically will manage this backwards march?

How specifically will the Constitution be assaulted? And what are the envisioned results?

This time the targets will be the First and Second Amendments… free speech, religious liberty, and the right to bear arms.

And the allies arrayed to strip these?

Can you say the National Education Association? The Sierra Club? Greenpeace? The Communications Workers of America? The NAACP?

Can you say the Obama campaign team turned into the post-election Organizing for America?

Can you say MSNBC? Tom Brokaw, Chris Matthews? How about CBS and Bob Schieffer…and CBS political director John Dickerson? More on the latter in a moment.

Let’s start with the president’s liberal allies.

Over at the Washington Free BeaconMatthew Continetti has put the spotlight on a significant story.

Continetti zeroes in on a little noticed report in the far-left Mother Jones magazine by writer Andy Kroll. What was Kroll’s headline:

Revealed: The Massive New Liberal Plan to Remake American Politics

Have you ever heard of the “Democracy Initiative”? Continetti brings us up to date about the results from two progressive “retreats” held in June and December of last year.

Participants?

… the AFL-CIO, the Center for American Progress, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Color of Change, Common Cause, Demos, the Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, Mother Jones (in a “non-editorial” capacity!), National People’s Action, the National Wildlife Federation, People for the American Way, the Piper Fund, Public Campaign, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and Voto Latino…

And these progressives, who, according to the Center for American Freedom have a collective revenue base of $1.69 billion at their disposal, are about what?

A full-fledged assault on the Constitution of the United States.

Oh, they don’t phrase it that way. They aren’t stupid. They will couch their point the way White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer did when making it to the Washington Post (as noted here by the Weekly Standard ). Said Pfeiffer:

“There’s a moment of opportunity now that’s important. What’s frustrating is that we don’t have a political system or an opposition party worthy of the opportunity.”

And what “political system” is so not "worthy" in the view of this senior Obma aide? Why, the American political system based on the Constitution, of course.

Make no mistake: peeling away liberty is what these progressives are all about.

According to Kroll, the first targets will be to “get big money out of politics.” Hey, no irony there. These groups with $1.69 billion at their disposal want to restrict -- that is take away…the First Amendment rights of Chevron (for donating to House Republicans), Google (“for its continued membership with the generally pro-Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce”) and ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- for daring to promote conservative legislation in states around the country. To do-in ALEC’s First Amendment rights the Democracy Initiative will use its resources to intimidate the group’s donors into silence -- forcing them to give up their First Amendment rights and withdraw their support.

All this on the heels of two important First Amendment battles already held: the decision to force the Catholic Church through Obamacare to relinquish its First Amendment right to not fund abortions and contraceptives. And the concerted attack by the Obama White House and its allies on conservative media and its personalities from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, in the case of the latter --along with Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Pat Buchanan -- openly seeking to remove them from the radio or television airwaves.

But that’s only the First Amendment.

Moving on to the Second Amendment the decision is to take away the right to bear arms. The GOP’s Senator Marco Rubio (FL) has said to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly:

"I think that the President — and he doesn’t have the guts to admit it — is not a believer in the Second Amendment, although he states that he is. I didn't write the Constitution. Neither did you — neither did he. If he doesn’t want it in the Constitution or he wants to reform the Second Amendment, then have the guts to admit that."

So while the President won’t have, in Rubio’s words, “the guts” to openly state his real goal -- there are all those Democrats in Red States to worry about in 2014 -- his allies will go about Romneyizing supporters of the Second Amendment.

How will it be done? It will be done in the same fashion the Kill Romney campaign turned Romney from a considerable man of achievement into a murderer and a thief.

Take a look at this TV commercial made by Congressman John Barrow, in which Barrow proclaims his steadfast support for the Second Amendment.

Now take a look at the very same commercial -- except this time it has been re-cut and selectively edited by the anti-Constitution group “Stop the Gun Violence” to cast the Congressman as a recipient of “blood money” from the NRA.

The irony? Congressman Barrow, from Georgia -- is a Democrat.

No matter. When it comes to the Kill the Constitution campaign, either you get in line -- or you get run over.

Which is where the mainstream media comes in. Take a look at this from Breitbart about this outburst from one John Dickerson, the political director for CBS. Dickerson, who used to work at Time with Obama spokesman Jay Carney, took to the cyberpages of the left wing Slate in an article titled -- really:

Go for the Throat!

Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.

Ranted Dickerson:

The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.…

Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray.

Nice, yes? This is shorthand that tells you the campaign to destroy the Constitution will have important allies in the liberal media.

One could go and on here with the list of the liberal assaults on the Constitution and the Orwellian fashion in which they are presented. Voter corruption becomes “Voter ID.” Attacks on the free market and capitalism are all about a mythical “fair share” -- in which the real game is to protect liberal elites while punishing the hated middle class. The most destructive game in all this, of course, is the blockheaded belief that massive government spending to endless degree will bring a halt to the growth of the national debt.

But why? Why all this?

What is it that drives this determination to reverse 200-plus years of American progress and march the nation backwards ?

Why wreck the Constitution with this vast confection of Orwellian language and straw men, both of which Obama indulges in on a regular basis?

Or, as Levin phrased it in the title of his last book, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America This is the reason for all this. To quote Levin:

Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology. There are, of course, unlimited utopian constructs, for the mind is capable of infinite fantasies. But there are common themes. The fantasies take the form of grand social plans or experiments, the impracticability and impossibility of which, in small ways and large, lead to the individual’s subjugation.

What we are living through, what the Obama inaugural and the campaign that preceded it was all about, is creating utopia in America.

That is the goal of Barack Obama. That is the goal of his campaign-operatives-turned-agenda-operatives calling themselves “Organizing for Action.” That is the goal of the humorously named “Democracy Initiative” and it’s $1.69 billion pool of special interest money.

And they cannot accomplish this utopia -- surprise, surprise -- by using the Constitution of the United States. The rights of others -- i.e., you -- stand in their way. They must be either restricted if not abolished outright.

There is no Orwellian language too far-fetched, no straw man big enough that cannot and will not be pressed into the service of wrecking the Constitution.

CBS’s John Dickerson put it well.

When it comes to the survival of the Constitution of the United States, the American Left is going to “go for the throat.”

If you think the campaign to “Kill Romney” was a political dogfight -- you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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